Originally born Mickey McGillicutty, I was orphaned on the doorsteps of St Shenan Egan's Basilica, north of Tipperary. Little did my mother know I would one-day rise to prominence as a world-renowned traveler. In 1978, the on-again off-again struggle between the Ballyneale Vagabonds & the Ballykisteen Itinerants erupted in chaos. Historians have since dubbed this little known skirmish as the "Gypsy Wars". Fearing for the safety of the parish orphans, a feisty old troglodyte known as Sister Marna McCreedy, set out for America, with 3 of her flock.

At the age of 2, I was smuggled into the land of hockey & Tim Horton's. But, we were only able to call Canada home for a short while, as Sister McCreedy was tragically lost to us in a freak fishing accident in the Mud Flats of San Pablo Bay. I still cannot eat diamondback sturgeon to this day. I spent my formative years as part of the Ringling Bros little known traveling sideshow "The Boy in the Chimp Suit". Life was difficult. I would spend hours in a comically vegetative state & for a mere 10¢ onlookers were entertained as trained monkeys would hurl banana peals at me. I did not resent my simian siblings though as they were like family too me & inevitably responsible for my emergence into humanity & eventual escape at the show's annual stop in Sheboygan, WI at the age of 7.

I would spend the next year or so roaming aimlessly through the dark underbelly of Sheboygan, un-affectionately referred to by the locals as "the Sheboygan Shantytown". Don't attempt to locate this shady squalor, as it has since been condemned by the Sheboygan city council & was rebuilt into a Univ of Wisconsin satellite campus. One fateful day, in the summer of '84, a young Irish couple happened upon me, talking to pigeons & having a tea party with an assortment of woodland friends, in a secluded corner of Moose Park. They too, were driven across the great Atlantic by the Gypsy Wars a decade earlier. Whether it was the glint in my eye or the sheen of my alabaster skin, they saw the chance in me they had long awaited, for a child of their own.

A new start at hand, I was renamed Michael Waid, a tribute to the late great Míkkeál St Wáydde, the world-renowned poet from the shores of Inishmore. Known for their propensity for travel, my parents raised me as a globetrotting aficionado. We would spend years traversing the planet in search of the next adventure. It was through them that I learned the skills necessary to become a world-class Geocacher.

If anyone else is willing to share the details of their sordid past with your fellow Geocachers, I'd love to hear the tale.